


Things You Said...

by youalreadydid



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, Panic! at the Disco - Freeform, Ryden, Short Stories, collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-09-16 19:02:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16959738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youalreadydid/pseuds/youalreadydid
Summary: Prompts used to create a collection of Ryden short stories.





	1. Things You Said After It Was Over

     Ryan Ross is the last person I want to see right now, on a night out in the city with my friends. 

“What are the chances you’re here in New York?” I say to his back, not even masking the bitterness in my voice.    
He turns without hesitation and the way he doesn’t look completely fucked up and torn apart pisses me off. He’s even more beautiful than he was a year ago, his hair falling in curls around his ears and that stupid fucking smirk still plastered on his lips. His lips that used to drive me insane with his smart-ass comments and the way he knew how to use them. 

He shrugs, “Just a coincidence, I suppose. Can I buy you a drink since you’re here?” 

 I want to say no. 

“Sure.” Is what I say instead. Instead of joining Shane and the rest of my friends, I sit down next to the man who broke my heart and fueled a bitter third album. 

     We make small talk between beers the best we can but it’s hard for me not to stare at him and see what I lost. I resist the urge to get blackout drunk just to forget I ever saw him in the first place, instead I sit and listen to his familiar voice, allow myself to remember as much as I can. I allow myself to let this replace the last memory I shared with him because this hurts less. 

“What are you doing in the city?” He pulls me out of my brooding, and I lift my eyes back to his. 

“We were um, doing a show.” I turn towards him on the barstool, my knees brushing against him as I spin around. 

“Ah. Cool.” He nods but I notice his smile falter, something small only I could notice. It bothers me that I still notice. 

“I’m, uh, gonna go out for a smoke. You wanna come?” He stands and smiles down at me but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Something stubborn in me wants it to reach his eyes again. 

“Yeah, I’ll go.” I nod and stand, nodding to my friends who are barely paying attention anyways. 

     I follow Ryan outside, ignoring how this feels like the time I followed him out of a club in New York when we were on tour, where we barely got into the taxi before we were making out like stupid teenagers. We were stupid teenagers so maybe it didn’t matter. We step into the side alley and Ryan hands me a cigarette, lights it where it rests between my lips. I wait until he lights his own before I start asking stupid questions. 

“Why did we end the way we did?” I blurt it out before it I think better of it but the alcohol in my blood tells me it isn’t stupid. 

He raises his eyebrows at me and smoke escapes his lips, “The only love that never ends is the one that never happens.” 

I roll my eyes at him, “Oh, fuck off! With your stupid profound shit!” Tears sting in my eyes but I duck my head and suck on my cigarette. 

“I’m being serious, Bren, I-”   
“Don’t call me Bren.” My shoulders shake and I hunch in on myself, feeling the burn of smoke in my lungs.

“You’re shaking.” Ryan steps forward, shouldering off his jacket and I step back, my back hitting the alley wall. 

“I’m not.” I keep my eyes down, tears spilling from the corners. 

“You are.” His voice sounds strained as he steps forward again, placing the jacket over my shoulders. 

“Why?” I drop my cigarette under my shoes and lift my head to look at him again. He’s lit from the back by a streetlight, a hazy white glow surrounding him and casting his features in a shadow. He sighs, turning his head to the street and I can see his cheeks are wet. 

“I had to make a choice eventually.” He turns back towards me, his breath puffing against my lips. 

“I was too afraid of losing you but I knew I loved you more than her.” He stops and laughs but it isn’t happy. “I knew how you made me feel and I wanted to run from it. It was so real and intense, and it scared the fuck out of me, Brendon. I figured if it was just me who felt that way it was easier to pick her and I wouldn’t lose you. But here we are.” 

His confession breaks me even further and it pisses me off because I would’ve killed to hear that a year ago. It feels devastating.  

“I’m sorry.” He breathes and I can see his tears even in the shadow. The sorry isn’t enough but it is and this is how its always been with Ryan. It’s always confusing and devastating and it makes you want him even more. It’s always made me want to be here to listen to him and help fix him and love him in the only ways I know how to. 

“It’s too late.” I choke out and he nods but he leans forward and I lean up and we fit somehow because his lips meet mine somewhere in the middle. The kiss is desperate, and I can taste him beneath the salt in our tears that mix in the feverish press of our lips, and I don’t want to let him walk away again. My hands cling to his shirt, his shoulders, his hair, anything I can, I pull him closer to me because there is too much distance for a year absent of him. A year absent of his desperate, tragic love that broke me in too many ways to count but I want it back. 

He slowly pulls away from the kiss and I ignore the crushing weight of knowing it’s over. 

“God, I love you. I miss you. We weren’t supposed to end like this.” His voice is choked, his lips red and swollen. 

“Then let's not end like this. We can fix it.” Hot tears roll down my face as I still cling onto him, willing him not to go. 

“You already said it. It’s too late.” He breathes in deep but doesn’t let go of me. 

“I still love you. Please.” I beg, but I don’t know what I’m begging for. Maybe I’m begging for him to stay and ignore the odds stacked against us, maybe I’m begging for one more night, maybe I’m begging for him to leave and act like this never happened, like that’ll close the wound. 

I pull him against me, memorizing his warmth and the movement of his bones beneath my fingers. I memorize him because this feels like the end. 

“I’m sorry, Bren. I’m sorry.” I can feel his eyelashes against my neck, blinking tears against my skin and I run my fingers through his curls. 

“Stop being sorry.” I stare at the wall opposite of us, holding him and letting the tears fall freely. There’s no use in holding them in now. It feels like years and merely seconds all at once when we finally let each other go. I stare up at him wiping his cheeks with the backs of his hands and I ignore how I feel like I won’t ever see him again. 

“Don’t be a stranger.” I whisper and he laughs sadly, wiping at his eyes. “I mean it.” I put as much bite into it as I can but I feel drained. I do mean it, I don’t want him to disappear forever. 

“I’ll try.” He gives me the saddest smile I’ve ever seen and I hold onto his hands. 

“Okay.” I whisper as he kisses the backs of my hands. 

“I did-I do love you. You were always the one I dreamt of in my future, the person I wrote my love songs about. Keep being great. You’re good at it.” I feel the tears drying on my cheeks when he squeezes my hands and leans back in to kiss me. The kiss tastes like him and a lost lover. It’s soft, chaste, it feels like a goodbye.  

     He lets go of my hands and I watch him turn around, walking out of the alley, out of my life once again. He doesn’t turn at the end of the alley as much as I want him to, but that’s just us. I stand there against the wall for ten minutes before I go back in to join my friends, but I don’t get drunk with them. If this is the last memory we get, it’s better than the last one. I don’t want to forget it.


	2. Things You Said When You Thought I Was Asleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is very short!

Even after I’d settled into the pillow Ryans lips never stopped moving. I swear, the boy never sleeps. His lips press slow and warm against my shoulder and it’s enough to make me melt. He whispers my name against my skin as he slowly moves down, and it sounds like a question I’m too tired to respond to. 

“I love you.” His next words are so simple, but they’ve burned into my skin. I always tell him I love him, he’ll just smile back at me, he only ever says it back when he’s buried in me underneath the sheets.

“I want you always. I don’t know if I can have that.” He speaks in between hot kisses, still moving down. His lips have found their way to the beginning of my upper arm, still moving. He must think I’ve fallen asleep.

“How did we get here, Bren?” The kisses are soft, his arm wrapped around my waist. I offered to share my hotel room with him for this show because that’s the only way we wouldn’t get caught by the dancers coming back from the hotel party. With our luck, somebody would see me kissing Ryan at the door before I left the room because I can’t help not kissing him goodbye.

“It’s different with you,  _I_ _feel_ different with you. It feels deeper than it should.” He’s speaking nonsense into my shoulder blade but with the way Ryan is, it somehow makes sense. It’s hard to make Ryan tell you how he feels outright, but I’m not sure he understands how not to make everything so complicated. 

“I should tell you I love you more often, not when you’re asleep maybe.” He laughs, his warm breath fanning over my skin, and presses kisses into my spine.

“But the way I love you scares me, Brendon Urie.” He breathes out and leans his forehead against my back. He leaves one last kiss in the middle of my spine and I can feel his eyes close as his eyelashes brush against my skin. I guess this is all I’m going to get, scattered confessions while he thinks I’m asleep. His kisses linger against my skin and I can feel every space where his lips rested just moments before. I love him, so I'll take anything.


	3. Things You Said After You Kissed Me

Ryan’s sat on the counter in the dressing room, still in his stage clothes, his shirt unbuttoned and his feet swinging in small circles. How he never sweats on stage is beyond me. The adrenaline from the show is still wearing off, I’m trying to shake it off by pacing and jumping around the dressing room, Ryan watching me with an amused expression from the counter. Spencer and Jon left for the bus ages ago but Ryan and I always try to wait for each other before we head back from the venue. 

“You were good tonight.” He shrugs off his jacket and I beam up at him, music still pounding in my ears from the show mixing with whatever is playing off the radio.  

“Thanks, man.” I look down at my feet and jump a few times where I’m standing but there’s still blood rushing in my ears, in my pulse points on my wrists. The adrenaline isn’t wearing off and I feel kind of high. 

“Seriously, you were.” Ryans tapping his thin fingers against the edge of the counter, right next to the bend of his knee. “I see you’re still running off the shows energy.” He laughs as I flex my fingers a few times before leaning over to turn the radio up. 

I nod and start singing along to the song, jumping towards Ryan to make him join me. He rolls his eyes at first but then taps his fingers to the beat, singing quietly to himself. I step into his space to make him laugh and we sing loudly at each other, swaying around like idiots. I love when he’s happy, the kind of happy he doesn’t have to think too hard about. He doesn’t get that kind of happy a lot so I make him sing with me, off key and loud but we’re laughing through verses. I step forward between his knees, setting my hands onto his shoulders as we sing at each other, not thinking too hard about it. 

The music fades out and we’re giggling against each other but without the music there’s no excuses for me to be set between Ryan’s knees, standing in his space with no more than a few inches from our noses touching. Heat settles on my cheeks so I remove my hands, willing myself to step back but Ryan grabs onto me, wrapping his arms around my neck. He’s not thinking, I’m not thinking. It’s the show adrenaline I remind myself, my heart hammering against my ribs. His lips crash into mine, knocking the air out of my lungs as I realize I was the only one with leftover stage adrenaline. I kiss him back feverishly, breathing in hard through my nose as he tugs me further into him, his legs practically wrapped around my waist. I kiss him until my lips feel sore and his tongue rolls lazily over mine and I feel like I can barely stand up straight. I’m the first to pull away. 

“Stage adrenaline.” He breathes out, still holding me pressed against his body. I nod quickly. 

He laughs, knowing we’re both lying.

“I’ve been waiting for a chance like that. Figured the stage wasn’t the best place to take advantage of it.” He whispers, his fingers rubbing circles against the back of my neck. 

“Can we keep doing this?” His voice is so quiet I barely hear his question. I nod again.

“Yeah. Yeah, we can keep doing this.” I whisper before I feel his lips press quickly against mine before they’re gone once again. 

“Good.” He lets go of me and I stumble back, watching him slide off the counter. 

“The guys are probably looking for us.” He smiles. I smile back. We grab our stuff off of tables and couches and the floor before I kiss him again. It’s quick, just because I can. He smiles at me, and we leave the radio on as we walk out of the dressing room.


End file.
